Politico: Congressional Aides Insider Trading

And Congress can’t seem to figure out why the American people give Congress such a low rating.

If both Dem and Repub politicos were honest with themselves, they’d realize that the voters have lost “trust” in them. This WSJ story on Congressional aides merely serves to reinforce what people think and why the TEA party has grown so much: that Congressional members and staff are out for themselves first and foremost. They take big checks from PACs and lobbyists then turn around and say that money doesn’t affect their decisions. Right!

No one believes that line any more. They put secret holds and threaten filibusters to get a special deals for some company within their states, regardless of the outcome for the rest of the nation, which we all know is to pay back a big contributor.

The rules and laws to which the rest of the nation must comply exempt them. While they’re enjoying a luxury vacation at lobbyists expense, the rest of us are trying to figure out how to feed out families. They’re using their inside information and lobbyist funding to enrich themselves (most Congressional members are now millionaires, even though they entered Congress without those millions) while the nation suffers economically and competitively. The voters are questioning where they fit in the governmental gamesmanship?
Take our country back!

It’s taken me a long while to figure what TEA partiers meant with that slogan because they couldn’t articulate it or the media failed completely to investigate it. But I think I’ve finally figured it out.

What those angry voters are saying is that want to take the country back from all the special interests who are writing and buying legislation and elections. They’re sick and tired of the kind of legislative sausage making that sells them down the river. At a time of economic crisis and structural unemployment, the public has seen the worst of Congressional games playing in which Congressional members seem more interested in their own jobs and financial futures than in the country’s future or our people’s prosperity.

Lies, Lies and where’s the Truth?

Throughout the last year as the growing numbers of unemployed people sat in front of the televisions, watching Congress, they grew more disturbed and more angry. Except for the spiritual descendants of the 1960s Goldwater movement and Libertarians, most voters in the TEA party as well as independents and Democrats are angry because Congress has taken them for granted and fails to be honest or moral or ethical. The only reason that Republicans are up in the polls is because Democrats are receiving the blame for not changing the way the Federal government, including Congress, works as they promised during the election. The same old system prevails…and the voters have had enough of it.

The people not opting into the same Bush policies or the old Republican agenda, they’re hoping for the kind of real change that puts average Americans ahead of special interests and corporatists. They want their country back from policies that sold them out, and increased the debt, so that the rich guys made out like Robber Barons while the average worker feared how they were going to keep hearth and home together and worried about a global economy that saw them losing ground each and every day, and their going deeper and deeper into debt just to keep up while hoping something would change for their situation and fearing it never would.

But do Republicans get it?

Republicans undoubtedly will make big gains in this mid-term election, but will they be able to hold it? The TEA party candidates all exhibit a similar characteristic: they’re not part of Washington DC. They have not connections to the lobbyists and the special interests who wreaked havoc on the economy or took advantage of legislative practices and policies. They’re outsiders. But as they become absorbed into the DC culture of money and power and the ever growing need to raise more and more money for re-elections, they too could fall victim to voter anger at the DC culture.

If the policies and practices do not change, the 2012 elections will see these new representatives thrown out along with many of the senior representatives. Americans are looking for long-term globally competitive strategies, not short-term election strategies.

If a Republican Congress – or even a partial Republican Congress – cannot supply those long-term strategies that make the US more competitive and provide the vast numbers of jobs needed, they too will be throw out for another set of legislators.

The question remains: do Boehner and McConnell and company understand what the people are saying? Given their Pledge to America, I’m doubtful.